Testing the online reading effects of emotionality on relative clause attachment

Previous research has shown the impact of the emotional dimension of nouns (i.e., valence and arousal) on the completion of relative clauses (RC) that are preceded by a double antecedent [e.g.,: Someone shot the servant (the first noun phrase, NP1) of the actress (the second noun phrase, NP2) who was on the balcony] (Fraga et al. in Q J Exp Psychol 65:1740–1759, 2012). The present study explored for the first time the role of emotional valence, specifically emotional positive nouns, on RC disambiguation in a self-paced reading experiment. Two types of NP1–NP2 relationships were compared: emotional–neutral vs. neutral–emotional. Results showed NP1 preferences in the emotional–neutral condition, whereas no preferences were found in the neutral–emotional condition. We conclude that during reading, the emotional properties of nouns play a role in disambiguation preferences: RC attachment preferences can be neutralized when emotional factors are manipulated. The results are discussed within the framework of current models of sentence processing and with reference to the controversial differences between comprehension and production.     

Career Adapt-Abilities Scale–Portugal Form: Psychometric properties and relationships to employment status

The Career-Adaptabilities Scale (CAAS)–Portugal Form consists of four scales, each with seven items, which measure concern, control, curiosity, and confidence as psychosocial resources for managing occupational transitions, developmental tasks, and work traumas. Internal consistency estimates for the subscale and total scores ranged from good to excellent. The factor structure was fairly similar to the one computed for combined data from 13 countries. The CAAS–Portugal Form includes all the items in the International Form, and it adds one further national item to each scale. The syntheses of a variety of differential studies are presented to illustrate the importance of an adaptability measure to the field of career construction.     

Moved by words: Affective ratings for a set of 2,266 Spanish words in five discrete emotion categories

The two main theoretical accounts of the human affective space are the dimensional perspective and the discrete-emotion approach. In recent years, several affective norms have been developed from a dimensional perspective, including ratings for valence and arousal. In contrast, the number of published datasets relying on the discrete-emotion approach is much lower. There is a need to fill this gap, considering that discrete emotions have an effect on word processing above and beyond those of valence and arousal. In the present study, we present ratings from 1,380 participants for a set of 2,266 Spanish words in five discrete emotion categories: happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness. This will be the largest dataset published to date containing ratings for discrete emotions. We also present, for the first time, a fine-grained analysis of the distribution of words into the five emotion categories. This analysis reveals that happiness words are the most consistently related to a single, discrete emotion category. In contrast, there is a tendency for many negative words to belong to more than one discrete emotion. The only exception is disgust words, which overlap least with the other negative emotions. Normative valence and arousal data already exist for all of the words included in this corpus. Thus, the present database will allow researchers to design studies to contrast the predictions of the two most influential theoretical perspectives in this field. These studies will undoubtedly contribute to a deeper understanding of the effects of emotion on word processing.     

Do adolescents who use stimulants have a different personality?

Stimulant consumption is especially important in our context because its use has greatly increased in recent years. The aim of the present study is to analyze the differences between stimulant users and nonusers (under 18 years old) in personality characteristics assessed with the MACI. The sample comprises 398 youths between 14 and 17 years old who were selected through random sampling in their homes or in recreational night spots. Results show important differences in personality features between stimulant users and nonusers. Stimulant users are characterized by having unruly, forceful, oppositional and borderline-tendency personality prototypes.     

Self-reported psychosocial factors among in vitro fertilization patients interviewed alone or with the partner

The purpose of this study was to compare the sociodemographic and psychosocial characteristics reported by female in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients interviewed alone or with the partner in heterosexual couples. During 12 months (2011–2012), all patients undergoing IVF or intracytoplasmic sperm injection at one public reproductive medicine unit, in Portugal, were interviewed on the day of the diagnosis of pregnancy, being recruited 221 women interviewed with the partner and 92 interviewed alone. Interviewers collected data on sociodemographic and obstetric characteristics; and anxiety, depression, social support and partner relationship were collected by self-administered questionnaires. χ² test was used to assess the independent association between the categorical variables and being interviewed alone or with the partner. For continuous variables, mean or median differences were compared by the t-test or the Mann–Whitney test, according to data distribution. No statistically significant differences were found in the self-reporting of depression, anxiety, social support and partner relationship or in sociodemographic and obstetric characteristics between women interviewed alone or with the partner. Although women interviewed alone were older and more frequently had children than women interviewed with the partner, no significant associations were observed. Thus, having a male partner present in the research setting during a self-administered questionnaire seems not to influence women’s responses to psychosocial measures. Other outcomes and settings need to be evaluated to support evidence-based guidelines for research on infertility.     

Ethical Education in Software Engineering: Responsibility in the Production of Complex Systems

Among the various contemporary schools of moral thinking, consequence-based ethics, as opposed to rule-based, seems to have a good acceptance among professionals such as software engineers. But naïve consequentialism is intellectually too weak to serve as a practical guide in the profession. Besides, the complexity of software systems makes it very hard to know in advance the consequences that will derive from professional activities in the production of software. Therefore, following the spirit of well-known codes of ethics such as the ACM/IEEE’s, we advocate for a more solid position in the ethical education of software engineers, which we call ‘moderate deontologism’, that takes into account both rules and consequences to assess the goodness of actions, and at the same time pays an adequate consideration to the absolute values of human dignity. In order to educate responsible professionals, however, this position should be complemented with a pedagogical approach to virtue ethics.     

Free associate norms for 139 European Portuguese words for children from different age groups

In the present study, we present normative ratings of free association for 139 European Portuguese (EP) words among 7- to 8-, 9- to 10-, and 11- to 12-year-old children attending the 3rd, 5th, and 7th grades of elementary and middle school in Portugal. For each word, five indices are presented: (a) the percentage of associates, (b)?the strength of the first associate, (c)?the strength of the second associate, (d) the distance between the first and second associates, and (e)?the percentage of idiosyncratic responses. Additionally, grade-level frequency values for each word from the ESCOLEX database (Soares et al., in press) are also provided. As expected, the results revealed developmental changes in the knowledge organization of the children, which occurred at the ages of 9–10 (5th grade) and remained stable in the 11- to 12-year-old children (7th grade). Specifically, we observed a decrease in the percentages of associates and idiosyncratic responses, as well as an increase in the strengths of the first and second associates from the 3rd to the 5th grade. Moreover, a comparative analysis with the previous work of Carneiro, Albuquerque, Fernandez, and Esteves (2004) on EP and Macizo, Gómez-Ariza, and Bajo (2000) on Spanish, for the subsets of common words (16 and 58, respectively), showed that the present norms fit well with previous EP data, but differ from the Spanish data.     

The acoustic bases of human voice identity processing in dogs

Animal Cognition - Speech carries identity-diagnostic acoustic cues that help individuals recognize each other during vocal–social interactions. In humans, fundamental frequency, formant...     

Masked nonword repetition effects in yes/no and go/no-go lexical decision: A test of the evidence accumulation and deadline accounts

The pattern of masked repetition priming effects for word and nonword targets differs across tasks: Maskedpriming effects in lexical decision occur for positive responses (i.e., words), but not for negative responses (nonwords), whereas masked-priming effects in the cross-case same-different task occur for positive responses (same), but not for negative responses (different)—regardless of lexical status. Here, we examined whether masked nonword priming effects are greater when the task involves an active go response to nonwords than when it involves the standard yes/no procedure in lexical decision. The obtained masked repetition priming effect for nonwords was of similar size in yes/no and go/no-go tasks. This finding is compatible with accounts of nonword priming that posit that nonword responses are produced by actively accumulating evidence for the nonword alternative in yes/no and go/no-go procedures, whereas it is inconsistent with the assumption of a deadline for no responses in the yes/no task.